Peaceful Transition of Power in Zambia

Mr. Hakainde Hichilema recently won the Zambian elections in a landslide victory (he won nearly 60% of the vote, with a 70% voter turnout). He assumed power on the 24th to become the 7th president of Zambia. He has unsuccessfully run for president 5 times (though sometimes on a knife’s edge), starting with the 2006 elections. He is ending the decade-long rule of the Patriotic Front party. 

In his inauguration speech, attended by a packed stadium, he said his government would focus on making sure each Zambian can have three meals a day and reviving the economy and stamping out corruption among other things (he said he wanted that message to go to his EU colleagues in an interview with Voice of America, perhaps signalling that the EU’s PR is improving in Africa). In his inauguration he emphasised that this would be a “New dawn” for Zambia. He also said that it is to “the great credit of the people of this nation that today marks the third peaceful, democratic transfer of leadership since the advent of multi-party democracy, three decades ago.”

This brings us to why this election is especially important: Zambia’s peaceful transition of power. Since becoming a multiparty system in 1991 it has been “a regional model of peaceful and multi-party political transitions,” according to USAID, but they add that “democratic backsliding and corruption threaten this relative historic stability.” These were some of the main concerns surrounding this election. There were fears that the (former) president, Edgar Lungu, would refuse to step down, after claiming that the elections were “not free and fair”.

Many have since congratulated Mr. Hichilema on his victory, and thanked Lungu for the peaceful transition of power; but as Hichilema said in his inauguration speech: “We choose not to call it “transfer of power” because power belongs to the people.”